Page 96 of Rears & Vices

It was plain D’Arcy’s convalescence would be a long and involved one, though the surgeon declared what he’d suffered as a bad beating and nothing more.

Nothing more, Everard seethed.

But D’Arcy himself concurred: for all that it had looked—and had meant to look, Everard rather thought—frightening as all hell, he wasn’t permanently maimed.

“Could’ve been worse,” D’Arcy whispered, on the second night, as he succumbed to groaning beneath Everard’s ministrations of salve and bandaging. “Fists and boots only. A belt or two.” He sucked in an inhale. “Careful, like. Hardly any malice.”

“That’s bloody well plenty,” Everard hissed down, removing his hands. “Plenty to kill a man, no malice necessary. If you could see the extent of the bruising⁠—”

“I feel ’em; that’s plenty.”

Everard was quiet.

D’Arcy had purple-wine streaks—veritable swaths—across his ribs, the splay of his back. Had yellowish grip marks on his shoulders and the inside of his elbows, as he had fought against restraint. Had a ring of swelling round his throat, where someone’s arm had yoked him. There were black-blue half-moons beneath both eyes from someone’s hell of a right hook. Several hooks: there was a split along his cheek, and his whole nose bridge had swelled to twice its usual.

“I’m not dead, Ever.” D’Arcy tried a wincing grin. “Nor yet close. I’m not missing teeth or limbs or eyes or essential appendages or even”—he paused, rolled over, and coughed—“fingers. All things considered, the pirates were nice about it.”

“Jesus sainted.”

Vitaliy, absurdly, seemed to agree. Arms crossed, standing quietly subdued at D’Arcy’s feet, he nodded. “It says much that he lived.”

“Much! Beyond a skull like a rock, it doesn’t say at all enough⁠—”

Vitaliy shrugged. “Harder to leave a man alive than to kill him by accident,” he said softly.

“I know that!” Everard spat. “First and foremost that’s missing is why? Why would anyone have such issue with him to do this—much less several someones?”

D’Arcy shook his head with a grimace, rolling it on the pillow. He squeezed Everard’s hand lightly.

“Let it go, Ev,” he breathed. “I need a bit of sleep, is all. I’ll be upright within the week. Look after Bell in the meantime, won’t you?”

“Preston—”

Vitaliy put a hand on Everard’s arm. Let him be, his eyes warned. Everard gently let go D’Arcy’s hand, setting it down deliberately careful, and turned away with an angry jerk.

Vitaliy said nothing. Over the course of the past two days, guilt had built upon him like a soft snow, chilling his presence to near-constant silence. Everard understood, he did, but he also wished to pitch and yell. He wanted to call an all-hands and declare there to be an interrogation; put up a reward; issue threats. He tried to think of what he would do if D’Arcy were still his subordinate aboard a Navy ship, and came up with nothing that translated here. Powerless, without influence, without station, he had no inkling how to deal with such a trespass against someone he loved.

Too, Vitaliy—who did possess these things—had done nothing.

“You will do something?” Everard demanded later, as D’Arcy slept fitfully in a half-drugged state beside him. “Surely, you cannot let this stand.”

Vitaliy was knitting again, frowning, silent. Then: “No.”

Everard truly wished to scream. “No, it mustn’t stand,” he gritted out, “or no, you will do nothing?”

“No, I can do nothing. Not more than I have already.”

Only D’Arcy’s presence kept Everard’s voice low, and even with that, it was a mighty struggle. “Then what, pray tell, is the point of you?”

If a man could hide behind needles and sockweight spun yarn, Vitaliy was doing so then. He flinched but didn’t pause. “Somewhat of what you are looking for Milly might fulfill. If you ask nicely.”

“I can’t do that!”

“But why not? She is crew advocate.”

“He’s not crew.”

Vitaliy raised his eyebrows. The clicking of needles went on steadily. “Sorry? We are all of us crew. He signed the articles, did he not?”